Keanu Reeves has faced many villains in his career. He’s battled Agent Smith and the simulation itself in the Matrix series. Every John Wick movie has a new villain for him. In Speed, it was Jack Traven (Reeves) vs. bomber Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper). Originally, the Speed villain was Jack’s partner Harry (Jeff Daniels).
Speed screenwriter Graham Yost was on the Script Apart podcast on Aug. 17, 2021 to discuss his earlier drafts of the film. Yost explained how Harry would have worked as a villain, and why they changed it in later drafts.
The original ‘Speed’ script pit Keanu Reeves against a disgruntled partner
Yost’s first draft of Speed began the same way, with Harry and Jack working an elevator bombing. In the previous version, Harry became disgruntled and disillusioned after act one.
“So yes, the idea was that he’s not the bad guy in the elevator sequence,” Yost said on Script Apart. “That guy just dies but he conjures up as if that guy had returned because Jack shot him and his life went to hell. So Harry creates this thing that he can solve and he can get revenge on Jack.”
Trying to top the best movie villains
Speed fans can imagine if Jack found out that Harry was behind the bus bombing all along. It would have added drama to the life or death scenario. But, it would have deprived the world of Hopper’s Howard Payne. Yost explained he was trying to top the greatest movie villains of all time.
Here’s the reason. I maintain that these movies generally, the best of them, have great bad guys. When I was a kid growing up, Auric Goldfinger was a great bad guy. Blofeld was a great bad guy. Dr. No was a little weird but a lot of the bad guys were really good. The best of all is Hans Gruber. I mean, I don’t think there’s ever been a bad guy as good as that. Rickman was just perfect and it was so well written. So I was writing the movie with Die Hard in mind. I thought man, Jack and the bad guy aren’t going to have any time together. Maybe over a phone, but they won’t that mano a mano thing going on. In Die Hard they came up with that scene between McClane and Gruber late in the day. I think they were already shooting when they came up with that idea and it’s one of the great scenes in the movie.
Graham Yost, Script Apart 8/17/21
‘Speed’ rewrites gave Keanu Reeves a new nemesis
Ultimately, producers decided that it took too long to explain how Harry had turned evil. Howard Payne was a simple, streamlined villain whose motivation remained consistent throughout Speed.
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“At any rate, what I did not entirely calculate was that when you cast Dennis Hopper, half the job is taken care of because he’s just so interesting,” Yost said. “He was America’s favorite madman at the time. The other thing was, what we called the Harry version lasted until the summer before we started shooting. People were on board with it. They liked the twist. It was interesting, all of that when you found out that Harry’s been pulling the strings.”
20th Century Fox brought in producers Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald. They were the ones who advised Yost to rewrite the villain.
“Very smart film people and they said, ‘You know, the Harry version may be doable but I don’t think you’ve got the time. I don’t think you’ve got the real estate. I think you just need a bad guy,’” Yost said. “In terms of the story of who did the rewrites, that’s when I was brought back for a very short period before Joss Whedon came in and took it to production.”
Yost also gave Howard a different last name.
“I called him Howard Fiske because I think we’d moved to a street called Fiske,” Yost said.
